


who could ever love a beast?

by eidetic



Category: Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Genre: Gay Male Character(s), M/M, Revisionist Fairy Tale, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-23 11:04:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20339089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eidetic/pseuds/eidetic
Summary: Once upon a time, in a faraway land, a young Prince lived in a shining castle. Although he had everything his heart desired, the many princesses who sought his hand in marriage found him to be inexplicably cruel and unkind to them.





	who could ever love a beast?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RomanticPrincess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RomanticPrincess/gifts).

Once upon a time, in a faraway land, a young Prince lived in a shining castle. Although he had everything his heart desired, the many princesses who sought his hand in marriage found him to be inexplicably cruel and unkind to them.

One winter’s night, an old beggar woman came to the castle and offered him a single rose in return for shelter from the bitter cold.

“Give this rose to the one whom you love,” said the old beggar woman, “and your lives shall be eternally blessed.”

But the Prince, who felt nothing for any of the princesses or, indeed, any of the other young women he had ever met, merely sneered at the gift and turned the old beggar woman away.

“This is an enchanted rose. It will keep until the right person comes along,” she assured him. “Surely there is love in your heart for the right person as there is compassion in your heart for this old beggar woman.”

When the Prince dismissed her again, temper rising at the impudence of her words, the old beggar woman’s ugliness melted away to reveal a beautiful but terrible enchantress.

Appalled by his anger and error of judgment, the Prince fell to his knees and pleaded for forgiveness, for mercy.

But the enchantress had already taken the measure of the Prince’s worth as a man and found him wanting—she had seen that there was no love in his heart for anyone. As punishment, she transformed him into a hideous beast and placed a powerful spell on the castle and all who lived there.

Ashamed of his monstrous form, the Beast concealed himself inside his castle, a magic mirror his only window to the outside world. The rose he had been offered was truly an enchanted rose, which would bloom until his twenty-first year. If he could learn to love another, and earn that person’s love in return by the time the last petal fell, then the spell would be broken. If not, he would be doomed to remain a Beast for all time.

As the years passed, the Beast fell into despair and lost all hope. People had forgotten about the Prince in his shining castle, and he was alone. He would always be alone.

Then, one day, he wasn’t anymore. An old man who had been unable to find his way through the forest had stumbled upon the castle. The old man was frightened and hungry, and the castle’s inhabitants, who had been cursed to a state of half-life as animated household objects, treated him to dinner and a warm fire.

Their hospitality to this interloper enraged the Beast, and he threw the old man in the dungeons and made him his prisoner.

The Beast thought nothing further of the old man until Beau, the old man’s young son, as handsome has his name would suggest, appeared to try to win his father’s freedom.

“He’s my prisoner,” said the Beast with a fang-filled snarl.

Beau gulped, brown eyes wide with fear, but he would not let this fear rule him. He said, “Take me instead.”

“No—Beau!” cried the old man.

But it was too late; the Beast had accepted the bargain. He removed the old man from the castle grounds.

Beau was left crying in the cold, dark dungeon cell.

The rest of the castle’s inhabitants decided that this situation could not stand. Led by a Candlestick, a Teapot, and a (rather more reluctant) Clock, they brought Beau out of the dungeons and into a lavish guest room. They plied him with food and song, and they pleaded for his understanding.

“The Master’s not a bad sort,” they told Beau.

Beau shook his head sadly until eventually they went away.

“_Try_ to be gentle with him,” they told the Beast, “and remember to control your temper!”

The Beast roared at them angrily and eventually they went away.

Gradually, though, over the course of a season, the animosity between Beau and the Beast went away too. Beau had always loved books, so the Beast showed him the castle library. They began to take their meals together, and Beau helped the Beast relearn his table manners. He was also learning for the first time to control his temper. Slowly but surely, mutual respect, and possibly even affection, blossomed between them.

But Beau was a man, and the Beast was, well, a Beast. Love, even if real, was impossible.

Love was what it was, though, and eventually the Beast realized that he could not keep Beau as his prisoner any longer. Beau missed his father; so the Beast bade him to go and gave Beau his precious magic mirror to remember him by.

“Why did you let him go?!” wailed the other inhabitants of the castle. They knew their final doom was nigh.

“Because I love him,” said the Beast simply.

When Beau left the castle, the Beast wept.

Beau’s father had not been idle in the meantime. He’d returned to his village to try convince the villagers that there was a Beast living in a castle hidden deep in the forest and that this Beast had taken his son Beau prisoner.

No one believed him. They accused him of having lost his mind and were ready to pack him off to an insane asylum—

—when Beau returned in just the nick of time. In a misguided attempt to save his father from the madhouse, he showed them the face of the Beast with the Beast’s magic mirror.

Knowing now that the Beast was real, the villagers reacted with fear and loathing and set out with pitchforks and flaming torches kill the monster for good. As for Beau, they adjudged him mad for not hating the Beast instantly as much as they did.

“We don’t like what we don’t understand—in fact it scares us!” they said.

Beau couldn’t help but wonder if by “what we don’t understand” they meant the Beast or himself. Probably, he reflected, they meant them both.

By the time Beau escaped captivity and returned to the castle, the Beast and the rest of the castle’s inhabitants had repelled the invaders…but it had come at a heavy cost: the life of the Beast.

“You came back,” whispered the Beast to Beau as Beau fell to his knees in despair beside the Beast’s prone form.

“Of course I did,” said Beau, sobbing into the Beast’s fur. “I love you!”

Beau had learned to love the Beast, and the Beast had learned to love Beau in return. Thus, the spell was broken. The Beast was Beast no longer; he was Prince once more.

And so it came to pass that love had grown in the Prince’s heart for the right person. It just so happened that the right person hadn’t been a princess or, for that matter, any other woman; it was, in fact, another man.

They lived happily ever after.


End file.
